Random Access
by freddylloyd
Summary: Tim is rifling through drawers and shelves in stately Wayne Manor’s back pantry. Alfred would like to know why. Inspired by a recent breakthrough at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy.


_KRATSH! Clatter clatter clatter._

"Master Timothy?"

"I'm okay, Alfred!"

"Yes, but is the house still 'okay'?"

"I just knocked over some stuff in the back pantry closet."

"And you _will_ pick it all up again?"

"Um. Yeah. Just as soon as I"—_PRASH!_—"Oops. I'll get that, too. See, I read about this new way to discover someone's encryption key, and I want to test it out. What's in these drawers?"

_Clinkity clang ping clink tinkety-tink._

"Are you looking for a cooking utensil, Master Timothy? Because otherwise, burrowing like a badger through those drawers won't—"

"I'm looking for canned air. Do we have any in the laundry room?"

"Canned air? Oh, dear. I suppose it's only natural for someone to start selling canned air, now that we've all been persuaded to buy bottled water."

"It's not _really_ canned air, Alfred. It's a bunch of fluorocarbons in an aerosol can. When they spray out and vaporize, they absorb so much heat energy that they turn stuff cold. Below freezing."

"And this is useful because?"

"Anything under here? No. You know how some wise guys are using encryption software?"

"So you've told me."

_Thump ba-dump. Phudd!_

"Like Braeman Brothers, that brokerage that's laundering money for the Westgate mob? Even if we get into their computers, we can't read their files without knowing their encryption key."

"And this justifies upending my laundry supplies because...?"

"I'm getting to that. Some professors at Princeton have figured out that the encryption key stays on a DRAM chip for a while after you turn off the computer. That data's supposed to disappear, but it doesn't."

"Rather like the mess in the back pantry."

"I'll clean that up, I promise. Right after I find the canned air. Are you sure you don't have any in your supplies? It's sold under names like Blow-a-Way and Dust-Off."

"I remove dust the old-fashioned way, Master Timothy: by not letting it accumulate. But what does dusting have to do with a 'DRAM chip'?"

"These professors figured out that if you spray a DRAM chip with canned air, it cools down so fast that the data gets frozen. Maybe there's a can up here? I bet stuff has been stuck inside these cupboards for years."

_Clunk! Demp! Cloppedy clop clop clop. _

"Well, not anymore."

"Sorry. Hand those back up. See, the damage isn't too bad."

"Master Bruce said the same just last week, down in the clinic."

_BOMP! _

"By all means, Master Timothy, just jump back down without warning."

"Where haven't I looked, Alfred? Any other place you hide cleaning supplies?"

"I have more supplies in my supply closet, of all places. But I do not hide them. It just seems that neither you nor Master Bruce ever bothers to look for—"

_Clatter! Klunk krump klank. _

"Perhaps I _should_ have hidden those away."

"Was there a huge sale on paper towels? Anyway, as soon as I read what those professors wrote about freezing a DRAM chip, I thought, 'I gotta try that!'"

"Of course."

"So I wrote a reboot code. Once I test it, then I can sneak past the armed guards at the Braeman office, open up one of their units, freeze the DRAM chip, reboot, and copy the DRAM data onto a pocket drive."

"I stopped understanding you after 'reboot code,' Master Timothy. And I stopped listening after 'sneak past the armed guards.' Is it necessary to—"

"Then I'll bring the data back here and isolate the encryption key. After that, we'll be able to read anything off that computer whenever we want. But first—_whew!_—I have to find some canned air."

"Alas, we've gone for years with nothing but ordinary air."

"I'm serious, Alfred! I used to buy Blow-a-Way to blast dust out of my computer keyboard."

"Ah, now I see the problem! Of late, no computers have been allowed to remain in this house long enough for their keyboards to collect dust. As I recall, your exact words were: 'How can you expect me to track the Riddler or finish a term paper using a model that's eight months old?'"

"Oh. Well, yeah, I guess I haven't bought any Blow-a-Way for a couple years. But don't we have any left over? Maybe in some old closet like this?"

_Bop! _

"Ouch! Who left those there?"

"Who left brooms in the broom closet? Let me think."

"And nothing but brooms. My head's fine, thanks for asking. Dammit, why don't we have any canned air?"

"Is there really need for such agitation?"

"Bruce is a billionaire, right? A can of Blow-a-Way costs, like, four dollars! All I want to do is cool down a stupid DRAM chip! It's not like I want to run the test with liquid nitrogen!"

"Oh, Master Timothy, why didn't you _say_ you could use liquid nitrogen? Master Bruce has six thousand liters stored down in the cave."


End file.
